Page 109 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was pitch-black, and Amelia’s car did not handle as well as Diego had expected it to as he reached the elevation where snow began to fall much harder than picturesque flurries. Diego clutched the wheel and navigated the treacherous turns with his muscles tensed and his jaw clenched tight.

The headlights did little to cut through the blinding white of blustering snow and the darkened world around it. Occasionally, he thought of turning around. It almost felt as if something was pushing him down the mountain. Almost as if Amelia was pulling him back.

Because that was tempting, and what he wanted, he fought that push and pull and doubled down on his own will.

His tires spun for a moment before finding the traction to lurch forward at a speed Diego wasn’t prepared for. The dangerous curve ahead suddenly came too quickly. He slammed on the brakes, which threw the car into a dangerous skid.

He course-corrected, managed to stay on the road rather than crash into the rocky wall to the left or off the treacherous cliff to the right. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he’d avoided disaster. At least so far.

He sucked in a breath and carefully let it out, squinting into the white world around him. It took a few minutes to fully realize he wasn’t stopped, though. The car was…sliding backward.

No amount of brake or accelerator was stopping his movement. He gripped the wheel harder, as if he could will the entire car to do what he wanted by sheer force.

But the car just kept inching back. He jerked on the emergency brake. For a moment, he thought it would hold.

But it only did for that moment, and then he was skidding backward, down the road the wrong way, with another dangerous curve right behind him.

He had two choices. Allow it to, or try to guide the steering wheel so he did not go off the side.

For a moment, he faltered over the choice. Falling off the cliff would be certain death, and didn’t he deserve that? Perhaps in exactly this way. Maybe this would be his final penance.

Death would be a reprieve.

Just like love would be.

That strange thought had him turning the wheel, eyes on the rearview, wondering if he could really navigate his way down the road backward in a snowstorm. Even if he tried his hardest, was it possible to do this until even ground stopped his momentum?

Or should he give up? Maybe it was all poetic justice. To die on this mountain. To die, just like they had.

He might have stopped fighting. He could feel that thought crossing his mind, but Amelia crossed his mind too.

She had felt guilt about the plane crash. She had wondered if everything would have changed if she’d done something different. The idea of it still curdled in his gut. How could she possibly have blamed herself? How could she have carried any guilt, even if only for a short time?

When the guilt was all his.

But if she’d felt guilt then , would she blame herself over this when he’d been the one to make the decision to leave? To drive into a snowstorm?

Would she feel grief and guilt if he died even though he’d been the one taking his life into his hands?

Couldn’t you say the same of your parents and the pilot who decided to take off in increasingly bad weather?

Amelia’s voice in his head again. The plane had waited for him because he was supposed to be there. If he had gone and been on time, no one would have had to make that choice. His choice started theirs.

Was it your choice that they would not take your no for an answer? That you did not want to travel with them?

He shook his head and pumped the brake once more, hoping to slow the skid. Hoping to do something.

Instead, it sent him into a spin he could not control this time. Momentum gained and he could not keep the wheel in the direction it needed to be, no matter how hard he fought. With a howl of wind, the side of the car crashed into the side of the mountain.

Glass shattered, pain erupted in his head as the car jerked, crumpled. He felt fire and ice. Pain, pain, nothing but pain.

He was thrust into darkness, and he did not know how to find light.

Amelia cried herself to sleep, what little there was to be had of sleep. The crying wasn’t all about Diego, either, though he was the catalyst.

In some ways, it felt like reliving those first few weeks after the crash. The guilt, the pain, the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same. That Diego would never be free of those things, and somehow she was caught up in that because she couldn’t get through to him.

She’d told him about her own guilt, thinking it would matter. And it hadn’t.

She hated thinking about all the things that felt changeable about that day. She didn’t know how Diego had sunk into such awful feelings. They did nothing but weigh her down, make everything seem hopeless and impossible.

How was this any way to live?

But she supposed that was why she understood him, grieved for him, couldn’t bring herself to hate him. She’d felt those things herself. It had taken experience and the way her father had guided her through her mother’s death to handle them in a way that was healthy.

Diego had none of that. Only the guilt, and for whatever many reasons, he’d gone through life only trusting the bad feelings. Perhaps those had been the only ones that had ever earned him attention from his parents, and so he’d doubled down.

But it only made all the rifts worse.

“And you cannot fix that, Amelia. You were utterly foolish to think you might have.” With those firm words spoken aloud to herself, she got out of bed, got dressed and went to deal with her job .

It was well before dawn, but she would have to deal with making sure the guests got off safely and soundly, so she wanted to be up and moving.

But the moment she stepped out of her room, she found Mondo and Mrs. Moretti. They were whispering urgently to each other at the end of the hall but stopped when she stepped into the hallway.

They didn’t say anything at first, just stared at her with wide eyes.

“Is something amiss?” she asked carefully, fear prickling her skin into goose bumps.

Mrs. Moretti pushed Mondo forward. He looked over his shoulder at her, reminding Amelia of a child pleading to not have to confess to something. Mrs. Moretti was obviously having none of it.

Mondo looked at Amelia sheepishly, apologetically. “Ms. Baresi…” He nervously clutched his hands together, but after a moment or two of her waiting, he straightened his shoulders and dropped his hands. It was like watching a boy mature right in front of her.

“Ms. Baresi, your car is missing.”

For a moment, Amelia could think of nothing to say. Her car… Why would anyone take her car?

But then it dawned on her. Diego hadn’t just left her presence last night. He’d left the castello.

And stolen her damn car. The gall .

“We checked the security footage and—”

“Mr. Folliero took it,” Amelia said flatly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put that together.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said apologetically, like any of this was his fault. “We didn’t know if… We weren’t sure how to…proceed.”

Amelia looked from Mondo to Mrs. Moretti. How to proceed. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to go back to bed and just cry .

But that solved nothing, and she was in charge here. Because the man in question refused to be.

“For right now, we’ll leave it be,” she said, trying to sound unbothered. “It’s more important we get the guests where they need to be. Use whatever cars you have access to. You have my permission.”

“Yes, ma’am.” But he didn’t leave to do her bidding. He hesitated, stepping a little closer, lowering his voice as if it might stop Mrs. Moretti from hearing. “I can go get him. It wouldn’t take me any time at all.”

That sat there between them, like they both knew where Diego had gone. Because where else would he go besides that damn cabin?

“No need, Mondo.” Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back, coughed the roughness out of her voice and plastered an insincere smile on her face. “We’ll handle getting the car back after Christmas.” She put extra emphasis on the word car . So there was no confusion here.

They would not be going to fetch Diego. He was making his own decision, and she would not change it even if she could.

He had to choose life. She couldn’t choose it for him. But she could choose it for herself, and that meant not going after him.

“Yes, ma’am.” This time he did leave, Mrs. Moretti following without offering any words. But she gave Amelia a little nod that almost felt like approval.

Amelia would hold on to that as some kind of confirmation she was doing the right thing by not chasing after him.

Something she, sadly, did want to do. She knew it was the wrong impulse, but it existed within her nonetheless. So much so that when she passed his bedroom door on her way to handle their guests, she stopped.

Then stepped inside. She looked around, those tears filling her eyes again. She would cry over him again. She wouldn’t promise herself not to. But she would not do it this morning when she had work to do.

Before she turned to leave, she noted that his bag sat on the chair in the corner. He hadn’t taken it with him, but he had taken her car.

Perhaps he wanted her to chase after him.

“He’ll be sorely disappointed,” she announced firmly to the empty room.

And still, she did not leave. She stared at the bag. The bag that clearly had next to nothing in it. What had he brought with him?

It was none of her business, of course. But what did she care about his privacy right now? He’d run away from her love. Why couldn’t she poke through his things?

Okay, she was reaching, but she didn’t care. Her choice. Her consequences. She marched over to the chair, pulled the zipper with more force than necessary. Inside was something wrapped in a soft cloth. Heavy and square. She hesitated, then leaned in to the anger that had led her here.

She jerked it out of the bag, then unwrapped it.

It was a picture frame. Inside, was a Christmas-themed portrait of the Follieros. Aurora couldn’t have been more than four, Diego a tall and handsome teen. She flipped over the picture, surprised to see her father’s handwriting on a little note taped to the back.

May they always be with you.

Bartolo

Because this was his family. His castello. His responsibility.

Not hers.

And even though her heart broke for him and all he was turning away from, she knew she had to do what she’d claimed she was going to.

She made her choice. She’d deal with her consequences.

She was done with the Follieros. She had stayed on as some kind of keeper of Diego for her father, not herself. If she stayed now, it would be for Diego.

Not for Amelia.

So it was her turn to leave. His employ. The castello. She would not wait for him to come around. She would not keep playing house thinking he might.

No, she was going to go live her life.

And Diego Folliero could go to the hell he’d chosen.